Technology for healthier minds - a turning tide

This is an earlier version of an article I wrote for The Conversation. 

The truth is, engineers like myself, aren’t especially known for our social and emotional intelligence.  It’s no wonder then, that we have seldom focused on the impact the technologies we create have on the psychological wellbeing of the people who use them.  I’m happy to report that the tides are turning.  A new era of positive computing could see technology designed specifically to promote wellbeing and human potential.  And it’s about time.

Generation Cures promotes altruism and empowerment

Generation Cures, an initiative based at Children's Hopsital Boston is "a kid-led, parent-enabled community all about kids helping other kids. Through original animation, games and kid-produced videos, kids learn how they really can make a difference."  

In there interactive adventure game, created in partnership with MIT's Education Arcade, players advance as one of two characters by solving math and science puzzles that lead them closer to discovering and distributing a cure for a fictional plague.

On the way they get multiple opportunities to make donations and fundraise through the game or in the outside world.  Other media embedded in the Generation Cures site exposes children to examples of kids who have made a big difference to helping other kids and provides encouragement and practical support for kids to undertake a wide variety of their own helping initiatives.  

A virtual psychosis experience develops empathy

We talk a lot about technology-supported psychological interventions for patients, but here's an example that turns the tables.  Drs. Yellowlees and Cook of the University of California, Davis created a virtual reality clinic experience that allowed participants in Second life to experience auditory and visual hallucinations associated with psychosis.

The majority of the 579 users who answered their survey (among over 800 who voluntarily toured the virtual clinic) reported that it improved their understanding of both auditory and visual hallucinations and that they would recommend it to a friend.  According to the results, the experience was both effective and rewarding in deepening empathy for participants.  See their paper for the full report: "Education about hallucinations using an internet virtual reality system: a qualitative survey" by Peter Yellowlees and James Cook in Academic Psychiatry 

Feeling better online - Study on Internet-based Positive Psychology interventions

Most technology researchers have had little reason to delve into the methods and experimental research on wellbeing that goes on in other fields like Psychology, Medicine and Neuroscience.  How could a concept as elusive as wellbeing be validly measured?  How could controlled tests be conducted?  Researchers in areas like Psychology and Medicine have developed and validated reliable methods over decades of research on issues like depression, wellbeing and happiness.

As professionals interested in building technologies for wellbeing, we'll need to leverage established methods to validly evaluate what gets built.  Below is a psychology study on wellbeing conducted via the internet with 1,364 participants.  This 2012 study by Schueller and Parks brings to light findings that could inform the design of wellbeing technologies.

Developing Altruism Through Virtual Reality

Potential opportunities for using technology to develop socio-emotional skills are increasingly promising. Take for example, altruism, the selfless, disinterested concern for the wellbeing of others.

Jeremy Bailenson and his students at Stanford study multiple applications of immersive virtual reality environments including the development of prosocial or "helping behaviors". A couple of these projects were covered by the Australian documentary series Catalyst, from which I have borrowed the interesting snippet below.

For those interested in more a academic reference, I recommend the forthcoming paper: Ahn, Le & Bailenson, "The Effect of Embodied Experiences on Self-Other Merging, Attitude, and Helping Behavior"in Media Psychology. (available online from Jeremy's website). Jeremy's work is described in more detail in his recent book "Infinite Reality" written with Jim Blascovich. 

He has also written a review of work on virtual reality environments for collaboration, which will appear in our forthcoming Handbook on Affective Computing (Oxford University Press)

SuperBetter Builds Personal Resilience

Then my phone looked me in the eye and said:  "Remember, enjoying positive social contact is the greatest thing you can do to improve your wellbeing".  It's been giving me advice like this a lot lately.  Tips on drinking water, making friends, accepting my body and staying optimistic.  If you're thinking I could do with a good analyst, then you have yet to download the SuperBetter app.

We posted the coming of this Jane McGonigal-designed resilience app a few months ago, when it was still a promise.  Well it's now been available for a while and, when my colleague downloaded it for his son who was nervous about starting high school, I thought it was high time to take it for a drive.

I have to admit I had reservations. Like many others, I was concerned about turning wellbeing into a shallow extrinsically motivated affair.  But I'm delighted to report that these concerns were largely swept away in a wave of playful and intelligent design, manifest in the app's effective structure, carefully constructed content, and a playful and credible user experience.

The Habits of Highly Empathic People

I recently had the opportunity to visit a number of research groups working on topics associated with Positive Computing.

On one of these visits, to the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I met Carolyn Zahn-Waxler. Carolyn's research is on Empathy, particularly the role of genes and environment (eg. family and socialization), and on the ways we develop altruism and compassion. Amidst a really conversation, Carolyn, introduced me to Roman Krznaric's work.

I very much liked his 'Six Habits of Highly Empathic People" article and the video above (although the appropriateness of the Che Guevara image could be debatably naive.)  The habits he includes are:

1. Cultivate curiosity about strangers
2. Challenge prejudices and discover commonalities
3. Try another person’s life
4. Listen hard—and open up
5. Inspire mass action and social change
6. Develop an ambitious imagination